Wonderful! - Wonderful! Ep. 14: Tomorrow's News

Episode Date: December 6, 2017

Griffin's favorite game for geniuses! Rachel's favorite urban legend squasher! Griffin's favorite way to get pumped for the holidays! Rachel's favorite meaningful menu! Music: "Money Won't Pay" by bo en and Augustus - https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hi, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. The role of Griffin in this evening's performance of Wonderful will be played by somebody who didn't just eat a pound and a half of kimchi fries. Babe, do you realize that last week you talked about the burgers? Well, we make mistakes often. The nature of the Wonderful recording schedule is this. Tuesdays, we got to redo the show at night after getting Henry down, so we don't have time to cook. And so we usually get food from places outside

our house, and those places usually give us this place. They serve what they call a garbage bag full of kimchi fries. That's how it shows up on the menu, and you see that, and you think, disgusting, but then you eat all of it. And so this week's performance will be played by Patrick Stewart.

Hello. I'd like to talk about my favorite thing. Tea. Earl Grey. Hot. Who do you want? And you can do a character too, because you ate a bunch of fries too, and I watched you. Rachel's too embarrassed to admit she ate so many fucking fries.

So who's it going to be this time? I can be myself. I'll play with me, though, in the space that we've made i'm a professional okay but you're a professional made a bunch of kimchi fries i wouldn't feel good to take a week off yeah come on this me patrick you don't want to be on a show with me engage with engage with me hello i am a character also oh is this an oc? And my name is Julie. This is Rachel's British OC, and we're very excited for her debut. I've heard a lot of rumors on the internet about Rachel's new character that she's been working on.

Give me the name again one more time. Julie. Julie. Okay. And so what's Julie all about, I wonder? She likes purple. Okay. She eat a lot of kimchi fries?

Or is that... She ate a lot of kimchi fries. Well, then what's she... What's she doing here? The whole point is to get fresh hoes who... I've never even heard of kimchi fries. She's here to clean your chimney. What are we doing?

You started it. Yeah, but you encouraged it. And that's even worse in a lot of ways. This is wonderful. It's a podcast where we talk about stuff that we're just like really enthusiastic about right now. It's your turn to start. I think it's my turn to start. And I would love to talk about something that I had to, I actually spoiled it to you because I had to check because it felt like I had talked about it before, but apparently not.

I want to talk about, let's, oh, you can do it like this. Let's about it before, but apparently not. I want to talk about... Oh, we can do it like this. Let's talk about chess, like sex. Oh, let's talk about rooks and pawns. Hey! Let's talk about all the good things and the bad things that may spawn. Is all the good things and all the bad things

a part of the song, Let's Talk About talk about sex yeah i guess there's bad things like sometimes you make an awful mess so chess is the opposite of sex in a lot of ways if you really think about it um i'm i'm a pretty new uh fan of this here mind sport that we call chess or some people call chess um but it really boils down everything that i really love about games into this like simple rule set with infinitely deep implications and my goal for including it on the show is to get you rachel or julie i don't know who's in there right now rachel's here now really excited about chess so you'll start playing it with me um so chess i have notes here on what fucking chess is um but it really is very very simple there's only six pieces right pawn rook uh knights bishop king and queen and everybody's got 16 pieces you got a bunch of pawns and less of the other ones and the point of the game is to

trap the opponent's king in an inescapable position, putting them in checkmate. That's it. That's more or less it. I mean, there's some other shit. Did you say king or queen? King. The queen can move around however she wants. She's like your best piece, which is true, I feel like, in so many ways.

The game has pretty ancient origins. It's presumed to have originated in India before the 7th century. And those origins kind of actually, as is the case with so many things, especially like games and folk games, inspired very, very similar, but just slightly different versions of chess in different countries throughout the world. But what I think is so great about chess, and the reason that I think it's a very, very good game, and the reason that I kind of got into it, I got into it for the first time, basically right when Henry was born, and we had these overnight shifts where he just wasn't sleeping. And so we would stay up, and he would be asleep in our arms, and we couldn't really do anything with one of our arms. And so I'd use the other arm to play chess because you can do that just with one hand what i find so fascinating on his phone by the way not no me and henry would play very very he's he is actually he's like grand master level um so chess i promise it's going to get interesting here real

soon what is so cool about chess is that it looks really simple, right? Each player has 16 pieces, that's 32 pieces total on a 64 square board. And all you got to do is capture the other king or put them in an inescapable position. But despite the fact that the game seems so simple, and there's, you know, only six different types of pieces, it can play out in so many different ways. And so this is a thing I found on a publication called PopSci, which says almost nothing looks more orderly than the chess pieces before a match starts. The first move, however, begins a spiral into chaos. After both players move, 400 possible board setups exist. After the second pair of turns, there are 197,742 possible games possible games and after three moves 121 million after every turn players chart a progressively more distinctive path and each game evolves into

one that has probably never been played before there's that's kind of cool yeah it's really really cool like you look at the board and it's like such an iconic sort of game right i feel like a lot of people know or think they know exactly how they feel about chess because it's just like, oh, you look at it and you think you understand it. There are some statisticians who estimate that the total number of possible chess games that are conceivably possible to be played out

is 10 to the order of 100,000, which is more atoms than there are in the universe by a pretty significant total. It is a nearly infinite sort of game where every time you play it, you're probably maybe even playing it in a way that nobody else has before, especially if you're very bad at chess, and you make all kinds of illogical choices. Because there's about 15,000 or so, according to this article I read, about 15,000 or so kind of like fairly common games that play out. Usually it takes about 30 or 40 turns before one of the players gets the other one in checkmate. But I mean, it can go anywhere. And I just find that so fascinating from a game design perspective. Because I talk about that I talk about, I feel like I talked about that when we talked about Splendor, which is another game that I think is very, very cool.

And I like that in a game where it's a simple game to understand, but there's lots of different ways it can play out. I think chess probably has that one on lockdown, because there's more ways that chess can play out than there are atoms in the universe, which is kind of bonkers. But that makes the game sound like super chaotic and probably not very accessible. What I like about it and why I've gotten really into it, I used a website called chess.com, which I kind of thought about actually bringing as my favorite thing, just this website, chess.com, because it's a very, very good website. But it teaches you

just sort of different strategies. And I'm not talking about like, oh, you must understand the Bertolucci opening before you can take part in professional chess. Things that are like really common sort of strategies that you have to do in every game, things like trying to get a material advantage by having more pieces on the board than they do, or setting up your opponent in a position where they are going to lose a piece no matter what they do on their next turn and it teaches you like common ways to do that and it teaches you like traps that you can set for your opponent it for example it's possible to win a game of chess in i think four moves is the least amount of moves and so it teaches you like if they make this mistake and then they make this mistake you've just won

at chess yeah um which i think is like it's it's it has made the game which i feel like i respected before is like oh this is for geniuses like who want to memorize different openings and different things which is still yes very true but there's also like very common sort of threads that connect these 10 to the 100,000 power games. I think what has always been hard for me about chess is that when I play a game, I tend to only be playing my own game. Like I'm coming up with my own strategy and my own approach.

It's very hard for me to do the thing that chess asks you to do, which is play your opponent's game at the same time too. So for every move you're considering and every strategy you're building, identifying what your opponent might be doing. And that's always been really challenging for me. It is it is. And it's something that I struggle with. I don't play as much anymore. I actually like actually just started playing again, because I had a day where I wasn't really doing much. I

was editing a podcast. I was like, Oh, that a chess.com see what's up. And now I'm kind of back into it. And I get my ass kicked a lot when i play against other players or they have like an ai that you can play against and change like the difficulty settings which is it's such a fucking cool website um but the it is a game sort of about you trying to think a few moves in advance while your opponent is also trying to think a few moves in advance then they will make a move that sort of throws your whole plan into the toilet and flushes it to be in the sewer with all the poop. But the like most common successful strategy is to just put your opponent in a position where they have to do something. It's really a race to see who can be the first person to put pressure. For example, the big sort of

mechanic in chess is you put the opponent's king in check by endangering them so if you move a piece that can capture the king before the other player can do anything else they have to move their king or capture the piece that's endangering their king or if they have to move another piece into the firing line so to speak um and using that like form of pressure like oh i'm guaranteeing that you have to do something about this it's impossible for you to do something about this other thing that I'm also endangering. So I know you're going to use your move to get your king out of danger. And so on my next turn, I'm going to screw you over in the way that you can't prevent. That's like sort of the main sort of hook.

And that's something I did not appreciate at all about chess until I started to kind of learn how to play it. And it makes it like a really a really really fascinating a really fascinating game about sort of lateral thinking about like every single turn um also i have a section here i want to talk about chess.com it's really good one of the things i like is i don't actually play that much chess anymore uh chess.com and a bunch of different chess websites will give you daily puzzles so they'll just show you a board in the middle of a game and you have to try and figure out what the best move is.

Oh, that's smart. It's so great. And you get like points. If you do good, you get points. Oh, I know you love points. But if you do bad or you take too long, you lose points. And it's a constant score. My score at one point was like 1600.

It was so good. And then I just, it got hard and I started doing really bad. And now it's like below 800 shoot um but yeah i think chess is really great and it's a fun game for two players and for lovers and for new parents i was reading a chess article on serious chess dot whiz and it said that it's good for new parents because it helps you stay in love longer and make you live longer and be stronger so and i think i have what i'm going to call a millennial disease which is where if i am not good at something uh the first few times i play it i lose interest very quickly uh so i'm just gonna warn you i am willing to play it, I lose interest very quickly. So I'm just going to warn you, I am willing to play it.

Hell yeah. Right after we finish recording, you think? No. But if- I'll pin tomorrow lunch, come home. If you continue to beat me over and over again, I may lose interest. Well, here's the problem is I'm going to come at you with the fury of a storm every single time.

And you know that. I know that. You wouldn't like it if I didn't come at you with the full fury of the storm and the brine of- Are you going to do like one of those things where I'm going to move a piece and you're going to go- Yeah, like an anime villain every single time. Into my trap.

Yeah. To be swallowed up by my mighty army. And do a lot of like, ooh, interesting. Oh, you went with that, huh? And then I'll get up and hammer dance. Chess. Chess. Chess. I mean, you know, I respect it.

It's always seemed like a game of intellectuals, which I appreciate about it. You're smart. You like games. There's smart games for- Yeah, but you know I'm street smart, I would say. That's the problem. Yeah. That's why you love Monopoly.

Monopoly requires all kinds of street smarts. To walk around boardwalk at night, good luck. And go to jail. It's like operation. Like I'm used to. Yeah, street surgery, baby. Having to get stuff out of small places. Yeah, stepped on some broken glass in an alley, gotta do street surgery.

You know how it goes. Have you seen that NCIS street street surgery uh-huh it's really good because ncis is probably my favorite medical show no they're doing surgeons street surgeons by day surgery at night medical professionals okay there's a very confusing pilot you've come here to pitch me today for NCIS street surgery. And who are we going to cast? Who are you thinking is the lead in this one? I think it's sort of a crossover Bacula,

maybe an origin story for New Orleans. I knew that you were going to expect Bacula, so I don't want to go there. I think I'm going to go Fred Savage. So we could do that. Just like, yeah, Firescape Ladder fell on this guy's butt.

We got to get it out of there. Some good street surgery. And then we can get a voiceover like, I was ready to perform street surgery on the man's butt with the ladder on it. But I was afraid because I was in love with my neighbor and my brother just died. No, let's not get too prescriptive about how this should go let's just kind of get some good talent in the room and see where it takes us fred get at us what's your first thing i feel like we're stalling my first thing uh is a website oh boy and his snopes checkers checkers.biz oh snopes Snopes. Snopes? Is it called Snopes because it sounds like psst, nope.

And I don't know what the second S is for, but it's like, hey, is it true that President Barack Hussein Obama, a lot of people forget about the Hussein, is actually an alien from Benghazi? Psst, nope. Snopes is the name of a family of often unpleasant people in the works of william faulkner okay yeah so this is it's like a fictional guy who's coming down he's like kim trails dude shut the fuck up uh david mickelson and his wife created the site in 1996 which used to be called the urban legends referenceference Pages. It was an early online encyclopedia focused on urban legends, and then the site grew to encompass a wide range of subjects. In 2002, the site had become well-known enough

that a television pilot called Snopes, colon, Urban Legends, was completed with American actor Jim Davidson as host. Wait, who? Jim Davidson. I don't know who that is. Oh, to the Google. I do not know who this man is. He's like a Davidson as host. Wait, who? Jim Davidson. I don't know who that is. Oh, to the Google. I do not know who this man is. He's like a game show host.

Yeah, I don't think I'm in that. I mean, it's not important. Yeah, no, my wonderful thing this week was not Jim Davidson. Pretty cool series. Let's hear more about Snopes, though. Okay, so I am a big fan of Snopes. Okay, so I am a big fan of Snopes, especially when you'll see something on Facebook or when you used to get those email forwards from people. I don't get those as much anymore. No, me neither.

But I'm going to throw out some of my old time favorite urban legends. Okay. God, that term is, by the way, can we just take a second and talk about how quaint that term is? Because now I feel like Snopes whole sort of domain is like fucking actually combating the misinformation campaign that is being sort of. The fact that there's a whole concept of fake news now. That like half of the people actually think is real. Yeah. These will bring you back. Can you die from drinking Mentos or Pop Rocks and Coke?

Yeah. I mean, I wish that I'm sorry to be a downer, but I wish that was still the subject on everybody's lips. Did George Washington have wooden teeth? Yeah. Again, great. But has Walt Disney's body been cryogenically frozen? Yeah, I mean, that's a good one to talk about, but now they're doing like... Play with me.

Okay, yes, it's fun to be back here. Tell me about the dress. Is it blue and gold or is it the other two colors? Did Marilyn Manson have ribs removed? Do you remember hearing this rumor? For self... Yes. Self stuff.

And was he Paul from the Wonder Years? Now that one's actually, Snopes missed the mark on that one I felt like. Did Sinbad play a genie in a movie called Shazam? Okay, do you know about this? I have learned about this very recently. This is like mass hysteria level. Everybody just thinks

Sinbad was in a movie called Shazam. I know. Not Kazam. It was kind of like that. You know the movie? No. I thought you were going to be like, yeah, I saw it. And there was a scene where they were at a theme park and he cast a spell and the roller coaster was flying through the sky. It was a time period where movies like Ants and A Bug's Life would come out at the same time.

You thought there was a Kazam and a Shazam. Yes. And a blam blam. You thought there was a kazam and a shazam. Yes. And a blam blam. Michael Richards plays a very funny, by the way, it's 1996. Michael Richards, who in 1996, again, gang, like we did, it was okay.

I mean, it wasn't okay, but we didn't know any better. He plays a wacky genie who summons a bunch of fast food, but this time it comes up through the sewer. Was Richard Gere taken to an emergency room to have a gerbil removed from his butt? How did that get all over? I don't know. Everybody knows it, though. That one was, that one made it. Okay, here's the weird thing. Maybe we should just do an urban legend one, but maybe not because they're all kind of mean-spirited in a way.

No, I know. should just do an urban legend one but maybe not because they're all kind of mean-spirited in a way because this one got sort of transmogrified in huntington west virginia where it was sort of sort of spread around uh about a local uh weatherman who oh no the rumor was just was putting gerbils up in the up in his you know his goose and so people would it literally like people talked about and people talked about richard gear and this was like pre-internet. Like this. This was definitely pre-internet. So I don't know how this stuff was getting out there. I don't know either.

National Enquirer, I guess. Maybe. Yeah. Maybe Weekly World News or whatever. Here are some other ones that I am familiar with. Can you get drunk from a tampon soaked in vodka? The answer is no. Oh, really?

But I did know a woman in college who thought that was true. Oh, hold on. You're talking about a tampon, not that you ring out to drink the vodka. No. Oh, no. Yeah. It's probably not healthy, huh? No, it's real bad.

It's probably real bad. Yeah. It's a temple. Anyway, there's any number of other urban legends on the website, in addition to, as Griffin mentioned, current fake news stories that are circulating. The thing I always liked about Snopes is that anytime I saw something that was suspect on Facebook or would get an email forward, I would immediately go to Snopes, look it up, and they do the research. They interview actual people. They make phone calls. They're actual real journalists, and they will get you the information you want. Oh, it's a good service. I'm just glad that Snopes exists and it's been around for so long. Thanks, Snopes. Yeah. yeah keep it up you're the only ones i

guess keep it keep it going boy i'm feeling bleak yeah just talking about i know it's no i know and it's very still and what's crazy is it's still super funny to me, the thought of just putting a... It's not, though, is it? It's sad for the gerbil. It's very sad for the gerbil. It didn't happen. It absolutely didn't happen. It absolutely didn't happen. Not to Richard Gere.

Not to anybody. Because how would you even... Let's dig into this. No, let's not. Is what the gerbil said. Hey, Griffin. Oh. Hey, Griffin.

Nope. Yeah, babe. Can I steal you away? Please, God, get me out of this segment. No, wait. I've got a thing. Let me know if it picks up, okay? All right.

Does it just give a bunch of kisses? Yeah. All right. I needed that after the Snope segment. Yeah. All right. I needed that after the Snopes segment. Can you read me that first Jumbotron with your just soft and sinewy voice?

This message is for John, the Bunyip Andler. And it is from your bestie, Michaela. Happy birthday, John. Here is a message from your number one baby boy, Griffin. Hey, it's me. I'm doing a Rachel impression. Bazinga. I love you so much.

I love you so much. I'm so proud of you. I'm so proud of you. Congrats on another year of life. Congrats on another year of life. Kerblam. Kerblam. Well, let me give you a clean.

Kerblam. So. So, happy birthday, John. Yeah. What are you laughing at? You're looking at something laughing. Is there something, a funny coded message in John's? Griffin and I talk a lot about how now that we have a child, we have no awareness of what time of year it is.

And so I read that the preferred time frame was December 7th. And I thought like, oh, we are way off base on that. And then I. And then you realize that that is a fucking thursday our anniversary babe our anniversary is this did you not give me a present because you didn't think it was this close i i have gotten you one present oh man i am working on a second i don't i don't ever like to put all my eggs in one basket while we're recording there's a big present right next to you, sitting on the couch.

You see it in that big box? No, I do, I see it. What do you think's in there? It's a pretty big box, I would say, about two feet by two feet in all directions, length, width, and height. Mm-hmm. What do you think's going on in there? Maybe a globe. Fuck!

Here's another Yahoo. Another Yahoo. Fuck. Oh, no. fuck here's another yahoo another yahoo fuck no this yahoo uh jumbotron was uh is for camille uh and it's from mary who says happy early birthday slash late christmas hmm now this is a pickle this one's a real conundrum. What's the preferred time frame for this message after? Next available. So it might just be a very late 2016 Christmas. I think they assumed we would.

Yeah, all right. Happy early birthday slash late Christmas, early Christmas to the most wonderful person I know. We've been friends through five wild years. Here's to 50 more calm ones. Please calm down. wild years here's to 50 more calm ones please calm down thanks for encouraging me to uh listen to podcasts in general and rachel and griffins in particular and of course thanks for being a wonderful best friend glad i got this new job so i could finally afford this hell yeah what a nice way to spend your your new money yeah it's a really sweet message. A very, very nice thing you've done. Please don't ever step to us about our timeliness on these messages again, or we will humiliate you.

My acid reflex is just really going wild. I really wish Patrick could tap in here for me. Max FunCon tickets are on sale now at maxfuncon.com. Watch stand-up comedy on a mountain. Tickets are on sale now at maxfuncon.com. Watch stand-up comedy on a mountain. Roll out of bed after a dance party to see a live podcast taping. Take classes from amazing teachers with the most supportive group of people you'll ever meet. Make a bunch of friends and eat a ton of s'mores. Come to Max Fun Con at Lake Arrowhead, California, the second weekend of June, for friendship, comedy, and creativity.

Get your ticket now at maxfuncon.com. As little reindeer hoes. It's too early, Griffin. We can't go down this path. Ching, ching, ching, ching bells. Christmas bells, bells, bells. Ching, ching, ching. Ching, ching, ching. Christmas bells. There's no good way to do that with your mouth, huh? No. Ching, ching, ching.

Christmas bells. I want to talk about... I mean, jingle jangle is usually... Jingle, jingle, jingle. That's not how they sound at all. Even a little bit. I'm trying to be onomatopoetic over here. I want to talk about Sufjan Stevens' Christmas music. Oh, I thought you might go here, but I thought you would save it until we got closer.

Can't save it. Can't save it. Because I've been, baby, you've seen me fucking laying down on the couch with an IV running into my veins through Spotify to get this, because my spirits, babe, they've been low. Not low. It just takes some work some years. The McElroys, as a family, start pounding Christmas content

immediately after Thanksgiving. And it's on a daily basis. You think I'm all full up from the turkey, but no, there's room for some mistletoe in there. Did you see Travis tweeted, I think, that he's already watched several dozen holiday movies. That's my blood right there. I want to talk about Sufjan Stevens Christmas.

He's like, I love Sufjan Stevens. You should know this. He is a genius. We went and saw his Christmas show together. So we went and saw his Christmas show together, and it was one of the best holiday things I've ever, ever done. And I want to talk about that sort of a little bit later in the segment. But so I'm talking specifically about Songs for Christmas, which came out, I think, in 2006. And it is a five-disc compilation of holiday music that he released between 2001 and 2006. And then he

followed that up with another five-disc compilation of holiday music called Silver and Gold, which was a collection of music he made between 2006 and 2011. Hey, Sufjan, it's been more than five years, bud. We're all waiting on it. I know you've been busy, but we are ready for the new shit. So I love Sufjan Stevens, and I have for a very, very long time. His music is very, like, emotional and very earnest. And I adored all of his old stuff, like Illinois and Michigan and Seven Swans. Was that the name of the album? Seven Swans? I think it was.

And just basically everything he's ever done. His latest album that he released called Carrie and Lowell is all about him trying to come to terms with the death of his mother, which is, you know, a very emotional album, which resonated with me for obvious reasons. But his music isn't just like sad emotions. And I think that's kind of like what makes him so interesting is that he has this huge catalog of Christmas music that is just like unabashedly joyous, happy, happy, happy music. And I don't know, I just really appreciate that, that sort of way that he handles doing Christmas music. Like nothing feels like a, you know, a shitty cash grab where it's just like, hey, everybody, a jingle bell, a jingle bell. You know what I think is interesting? There's something about that kind of unabashed positivity that feels a little punk rock, doesn't it? It does, because it also doesn't feel like twee. Like, it doesn't feel like fake. It's kind of like an act of, like, rebellion of just, like, I'm going for it, guys. I know shit sucks, and I'm leaning into this, like, old school joy. Yeah, I don't even think it addresses that shit sucks.

I think it's just like, it's Christmas. Like it's literally just a voice just screaming. Like it's like elf. It's like a buddy from elf as a like musical sort of style of, of arrangement. So these, these,

these albums are very, very eclectic. I think there's something like a hundred songs across all 10 of these discs. And there's a pretty eclectic mix between these 10 discs. There are sort of like three main types of songs on these albums. And the first is sort of arrangements of holiday classics. And like I said, they are not shitty, straightforward cash grabs. If you've listened to his other albums, like

they are usually these huge orchestral arrangements like you would hear in some of his songs like Chicago or the anything off Illinois or his earlier albums. Or they are just these like, wild techno jams that are coming at you like really, really heavy. He does a version of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, and it's just this booming Christmas assault, and it opens up one of the discs on silver and gold. And it's just really so energetic, but it's also kind of sweet, which is true of virtually every Christmas song he's ever done. There's another version of We Need a Little Christmas

that sounds just like a fucking parade through christmas town um but i want to play a clip from uh his arrangement of my favorite holiday song which is oh holy night uh because it's like the only holiday song with a with a drop i feel like and this is that sick drop from sufjan stevens arrangement of oh well one of his he's done several but one of his arrangements of O Holy Night. These albums also contain just like straight up non-Christmas hymns that explore a kind of like religious like fascination or curiosity and like near reverence that I think is kind of present throughout like all of his albums, uh, especially like seven swans deals with these themes a lot.

Uh, uh, Carrie and Lowell has a song about the shade of the shadow of the cross or something. I just butchered that. But, um, these,

these songs like aren't explicitly Christmas songs, but they still like, they still feel very like warm and accessible in a way that I feel like Christmas songs or Christmas hymns do. A lot of them are just pared down arrangements and kind of pretty. And I think I like them because growing up in church, I always sang and heard these songs a lot, but I don't think I appreciated them in any way musically until I heard them arranged by a musician who I respected and admired a whole lot, like Sufjan. So there's a really great version of Amazing Grace, and there's been like a billion

versions of Amazing Grace. And so I feel like that's kind of laudable. That's just like harmonies and banjos. And that's more or less sort of the case for a lot of these hymns. He does a soft duet of Holy, Holy, Holy, that's really nice. But I want to play a clip from Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, which is again, not a Christmas song, but like played amongst the other Christmas songs. I don't know. It just makes you feel like, I don't know. Yeah, I don't have that background. So a lot of these songs are not familiar to me, but they are beautiful. They're so nice. They're so beautiful. And like, I don't know if I ever sang this particular one

in church because it's pretty old school, but it's still like, I don't know if I ever sang this, this particular one in church, because it's pretty old school. But it's still like, I don't know, none of these songs that I ever like, while I was hearing them in church thought like, oh, that's a banger. But now that I've heard this, like really good arrangement of it, I like, oh, okay, I do appreciate this in a different way. So this is Come Now, Found Every Blessing. Here's my heart. Take and seal it. Seal it for five courts above. La, la, la. La, la, la. La, la, la. La, la, la. And then these albums also contain Sufjan's original holiday songs, which are maybe a little bit more hit and miss than the other ones, but it's all worth it for Christmas Unicorn. Yeah, we were listening to this the other day in the car, and I forgot just how long it is.

It's a 12 and a half minute long song, sung from the perspective of this supernatural ultimate Christmas being. And it's just like the most Sufjan Stevens shit like ever. And the last basically two thirds of the song maybe is this long orchestral breakdown that sort of repeats the chorus of the song about being a Christmas unicorn. And then it adds in a refrain from Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart for some reason, because why not? I feel like it represents sort of this whole idea of Sufjan Stevens having this huge focus on writing non-hyper-commercialized holiday music, and that it's just like, I think that

the holidays are great, and you can have a lot of fun with them and appreciate them in any way that you want. And also, here's some fucking Joy Division because I'm in charge here and that's what's up. So this is a little bit of Christmas Unicorn. So yeah, there's like a hundred of these songs and they're all, most of them are pretty good. I mean, some of them aren't, but there's a hundred of them and that's a pretty high hit, right? Um, and yeah, I just, I just them aren't, but there's a hundred of them, and that's a pretty high hit rate. And, yeah,

I just really appreciate how, like, genuinely psyched this dude is about the holidays. And that is just not... I kind of love Christmas albums, I think. Like, I obviously am not speaking about all of them, and I don't have a comprehensive knowledge.

But there are so many good ones. There's a lot of good ones. I do not mean to say that these are the only good ones there's a lot of good ones i do not mean to say that these are the only good christmas albums because i could go on and on and on and god knows like if i don't have a whole segment about the vince geraldii trio charlie brown christmas album which i've maybe actually pound for pound listened to more than sufion's music yeah um no i'm not saying that but i am saying like a lot of the times the shells are just i mean fucking love actually no matter what you think of that movie, like, actually, I really feel like it kind of encapsulates this idea of just like, oh, it's Christmas.

I don't know. Just get the fuck up there and sing. Can we do, have you done All I Want for Christmas is You in just like a smooth jazz style? Because that kind of sucks. But there's a lot of Christmas music where you can actually feel like, oh, this person's kind of psyched. And they're like getting that excitement out there that, like, I don't know, I really enjoy. And I feel like Sufjan stuff is sort of the epitome of that.

What else is good Christmas music? I mean, we've listened to a lot of, you have a whole Christmas playlist. It's all Sufjan and Vince Giraldi. That is not true. It's mostly Sufjan and Vince Giraldi. What's that song we love so much? Oh, This Christmas by Donny Hathaway? Yes.

That's a good one. And is this just our Christmas music block? It's kind of starting to feel like it. Wolfpack has a song called Christmas in LA that stopped this podcast right fucking now and go listen to Christmas in LA by Wolfpack. It is so good. Yeah. All right.

Anyway, Sufjan, thank you. Can I do my thing? Yes. Okay. In honor of our anniversary, I didn't want to get too sappy. Oh, boy. I, instead of talking about our wedding, which was wonderful. Should I have done an anniversary?

Hold on. Wait. Pause the part. Hold on. Should I have done an anniversary one? No, I was worried you were going to, though. No, mine is not sappy. Is it me?

No. I'm always still waiting for the week where you're just like, this is it. It's Griffin. We have plenty of opportunities for that coming up. Oh, I guess. For this episode, I wanted to talk about the menu at our wedding. Oh, okay. Which was also wonderful.

Very accessible. I love it. I didn't want to get too, you know, droopy. No, it's combining our two favorite things, which is loving each other and loving the lots and lots of leftovers that we had for about a month and a half after our wedding. So I went into my email and got the exact menu. Fuck yeah. Take me on this trip down memory lane.

And we can just sort of do a play-by-play. By the way, can we do a quick debrief? Did you—I loved planning a wedding. This was an all-hands-on-the-ball affair, by the way, folks. There's none of that fucking gender barriers bullshit rachel and i were both like hell yeah biggest party we're ever gonna throw let's get gnarly on it i think part of it was that neither griffin or i had a big plan going into this no but we developed them as we learned about the options which i enjoyed yeah i i found that

finding a venue was the most terrible part. Yeah, that part was really rough. We had to go to all these venues and talk to these people that we did not like. There was a dude at this one venue who, by the way, they had the crosses on Gethsemane or whatever, like overlooking the wedding site, which was rad. And they were showing us the ceremony site and he was like and when she walks down the aisle well let me do the accent when she walks down that aisle bud i don't look at her i never look at her i look at you because when i see the tears in your eyes that's how i know that's how you know what he also said that he liked to keep the bride happy and sequestered or else you might end up with something that ends in a zilla yeah meanwhile the boys are gonna be watching turn me off a little bit here's your sign anyway we didn't

go with that one yeah anyway we we did eventually find a venue that was wonderful. She turned it. And guess what? On the day Rachel did get angry. She turned into Godzilla. It was wild. Ate my dad right there on the spot. No, Griffin. So. So I wanted to share a wedding menu in particular, which I thought would leave, you know leave a little mystery to our big day.

Yeah. But invite people into the warm comfort food that we provided. Oh, man. The food was so good. So good. It was so good. And it was the first time I ate it because when we did the tasting for the first time, we were picking the menu, I had bad, bad diarrhea.

Let's move on, though. We don't have to talk about it. Every episode of this podcast. Well, yeah, I got to be honest with the people. We can't lie to to talk about it. Every episode of this podcast. Well, yeah, I gotta be honest with the people. We can't lie to them about the time. Every episode of this podcast. What if Snopes looked me up and been like. Involves you discussing something terrible that has happened to your stomach.

Or my butt, but let's not. Okay. Okay. It was actually, I was being autobiographical when I was talking about the fire escape ladder falling on somebody's butt. It was me. It happened to me, too. No, I think you had salmonella.

I think this is back when you had salmonella. Oh yeah, that sucked. Or was it... Because my friend Evan didn't know how to cook a fucking chicken leg. What is the cruise ship disease? I think it was norovirus maybe. I don't know. I've heard them all. Catch them, catch them, gotta catch them all.

Got to catch them all. Griffin's diarrhea. Norovirus diarrhea. Salmonella, E. coli. Here's our menu. Okay, now I'm appetized. Honey crisp salad, which was apples, candy pecans, warm goat cheese medallions, lemon basil dressing. Oh, man. This is, by the way, this may sound like very bougie.

It was like an outdoor wedding. It was nice and it was very quaint. Well, it was buffet style, too. It was real cash. It was like an outdoor wedding in a, it was like, it was nice and it was very quaint. Well, it was buffet style too. It was very, yeah, it was pretty cash. Also, it was 19 degrees outside. Yeah, it was literally 27 degrees. Chicken pot pie. Oh.

Smoked brisket. I remember him. Fried green tomatoes. Fried green tomatoes. Rosemary red potatoes. Oh, I got a lot of ados. Because it was 2013. Roasted Brussels sprouts.

Those are good in 2017. Artisan breads. I don't remember you, artisan breads. I think I missed you. We didn't waste time on bread. And then our cake. Yes. Which was a vanilla cake with key lime filling.

Very good. It was a very good cake. So I bring all that up because it was a very good cake and so i bring all that up uh because it was very cold and it was very nice to have all of these warm comforting foods december 7th it was an outdoor wedding by the way 2013 in our defense we live in texas and the uh december 7th 2012 the year before our wedding uh it was like 68 degrees on December 7th. So we were like, we're good. And then we kind of weren't good. Yeah, this year I think the high is going to be in the low 60s.

Typically, it is a safe day to have a wedding. It's fine. It's not even like we bought a cornhole set or rented a cornhole set so people would be out on the lawn playing cornhole and bocce. But they couldn't because the grass was frozen. They cut their feet to ribbons and polar bears came out and penguins mated. Yeah, that was a good one. Yeah. I'm glad that we made so many diarrhea jokes in there because I feel like we would have

gotten through it really fast. But then again, we're at 52 minutes, so. Yeah. Well, you know, there are any number of things I could have talked about on our wedding, but I wanted to keep it focused. I just love you so much. I'm just so happy that we're still married after all these years, four years, four years. What's that the paper anniversary? I always think it's paper. It's not though, is it? Paper is one year. I think this year might be like linen or something. It's mercury. Oh, no. Yeah, I know. I got you this bucket of mercury. That's dangerous.

Well, don't touch it. It's a big bucket of mercury. Yeah, I mean, don't touch it. It's not supposed to be touched. It's supposed to be looked at and admired and drank and turn in thermometers. Do you want to hear submissions? I almost said a Yahoo again. Rachel and I had one alcoholic beverage with dinner,

and I'm wondering if you and I are just, like, completely fucked up right now. I'm fine. You fine? You want to talk some more about Blue Apron? Here's one from Val, who says, Every time my iPhone updates, I look for dinosaur emojis. It does sound like a Yahoo. it's really good val i'm not it's no judgment uh i look for dinosaur emojis it always seemed like a lapse in judgment to have 15 different types of hearts but no dinos but i'm pleased to report that my recent update has not

one but two different types of dinosaurs a t--Rex and an Apatosaurus. I'm not laughing. I swear to God, this is not making fun of you laughing. This is like, I'm glad that you exist, Val, because this is very, very good. And I'm so glad that our long national nightmare is finally over. We finally got two. But emojis are supposed to be like shorthand.

What could it possibly, unless it's like, uh-oh, I'm in Jurassic Park. or maybe you're talking about a really old person don't be like that though they probably have stories from the big war where you're going to a museum well don't yeah that one actually tracks yeah here's a submission from rose who says whale watching is wonderful for only 20 bucks i can cheer and shout about wild aquatic mammals with strangers from all walks of life sometimes I think I could get down with whale watching. Have you ever been whale watching? No, I've never been whale watching. I did watch a blimp crash into the ocean one time, though.

Is that true? Yeah, it was the Hinden hindenburg okay do you have any more submissions no yes here's one from here's one from andy who says you know what i think is wonderful the mountain goats the front man john darnielle has released over a thousand songs over the last 30 years or so and the main overarching theme is triumph over adversity, even if the only triumph is just surviving. They're also inspiring from a creative stance because for the last decade of existence, all of the band's albums were recorded on a home tape deck. Some good albums to get started with are All Hail West Texas, The Sunset Tree, and Transcendental Youth.

You love the Mountain Goats, don't you? I do love the Mountain Goats. I'm not super well-versed in the Mountain Goats, don't you? stuff but um i love the mountain goats yeah the john darnielle's voice is like so uh unique and the writing of the songs is so brilliant and uh i uh if you follow him on twitter you probably know that he's also just kind of a just a smart smart dude good follow premium follow here it's our segment where we highlight great twitter users on the great platform Twitter. You know what premium follow sounds like. I don't. So I think that's it for this episode.

Yeah. I've had a lot of fun here with you today. Me too. I'm going to edit some of the chess stuff out. It was a little boring, but it got live here towards the end. So thank you all so much for listening though. And thanks to Maximum Fun for having us. You can go to MaximumFun.org and check out all the great shows there.

Shows like Titan Fights and Heat Rocks and... Inside Pop. Inside Pop. And Next to Pop. And Bullseye. And Bullseye. And all the great shows there. You can go to McElroyShows.com and check out the other stuff we do.

Thanks to Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song money won't pay you can find a link to that in the episode description and hmm join our Facebook group join the group get on the book and just be good yeah just be good just for like a

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